Pure Strategy
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Pure Strategy

Everett Dolman

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eBook - ePub

Pure Strategy

Everett Dolman

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About This Book

A stimulating new inquiry into the fundamental truth of strategy - its purpose, place, utility, and value.

This new study is animated by a startling realization: the concept of strategic victory must be summarily discarded. This is not to say that victory has no place in strategy or strategic planning. The outcome of battles and campaigns are variables within the strategist's plan, but victory is a concept that has no meaning there.

To the tactical and operational planner, wars are indeed won and lost, and the difference is plain. Success is measurable; failure is obvious. In contrast, the pure strategist understands that war is but one aspect of social and political competition, an ongoing interaction that has no finality. Strategy therefore connects the conduct of war with the intent of politics. It shapes and guides military means in anticipation of a panoply of possible coming events. In the process, strategy changes the context within which events will happen. In this new book we see clearly that the goal of strategy is not to culminate events, to establish finality in the discourse between states, but to continue them; to influence state discourse in such a way that it will go forward on favorable terms. For continue it will. This book will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking across the field and strategic studies.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2004
ISBN
9781135767983

1

THE PATH OF PURE STRATEGY
We soldiers are mostly alchemists, and many of us more than military sorcerers.
J.F.C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War1
Pure Strategy began as an attempt to answer a pair of questions that have been at the core of long-standing debate in military studies. Can there be an operational theory of war? If so, what is the utility of culling from a broader theory of war a unique and meaningful operational one? I wanted to determine, specifically, if air and space warfare were innately different from other operational-level forms, and if so, what value might be gleaned from the explanation. The difference had to be substantial, enough to clearly separate air and space warfare from at least ground and sea war, but at the same time not so exceptional as to separate it from the general theory of war in which, with the others, it must reside. I wanted the effort to be scientific, empirical, and above all, useful. In due course I found, as have so many who grapple with these issues, that a meaningful exploration of the tenets of war and strategy requires more than rigorous mathematical analysis and complete rationality of purpose. It requires revelation, insight, steadfast commitment, and faith, for strategy is not a pure science. It cannot be. There are, of course, tools, tricks, rules of thumb, and innumerable models that will assist the planner bold enough to make strategy. None by themselves will suffice, however, and all of them together are not enough. Strategy is not a thing that can be poked, prodded, and probed. It is an idea, a product of the imagination. It is about the future, and above all it is about change. It is anticipation of the probable and preparation for the possible. It is, in a word, alchemy; a method of transmutation from idea into action.
The odd angle of entry into this debate caused me to look at the primary issues of strategy in a manner quite different than most previous analyses. In the main, war theorists have (quite rationally) tended to define strategy in a way that makes cogent a comparative examination of historical victories and defeats. The effort is undertaken to provide decision makers with a rationale for why events unfolded in the manner they did, and more importantly, to serve as a manual or guide for future decision-making. The method varies, but the intent is constant. That the latter is explicit or implied matters little. As an examination of strategy, it is always at the fore. Actions are presumed to determine outcomes, and so a careful analysis should be able to tie outcomes to their determining cause. Analyses that connect favorable outcomes with momentous and decisive actions are preferred, as these should provide an economical guide for future actions. The goal is laudable, and the analysis thoroughly encompassing. Lamentably, however, no universally reliable guide has been achieved.
Part of the trouble is to be found in the malleability of key terms and methods. Whether strategy is first defined and then historical examples are brought in to demonstrate the robustness of the interpretation, or a careful comparison of like situations is studied so as to draw out the key tenets in order to define it, the propensity has been to make the concept of strategy rather broad and quite acquiescent. To accommodate such breadth, strategy is typically redefined for each theorist and each application, leading to a great deal of confusion and misconception about the place and purpose of strategy.
More constraining to the effort to find the foundational laws and principles of strategy, such comparative and historical analyses have tended to share a common set of constitutive conjectures. First is an assumption that battles and wars are won or lost, a premise so obvious it is not even stated, but one that becomes increasingly problematic for the pure strategist. Second, the outcome of conflict, be it victory or defeat, can be traced directly to the actions and decisions of key figures, usually at crucial moments or turning points, but also in the routines and processes of preparation for war. The common-sense import is that an alternative outcome would have occurred if the key decisions had been different. Agent-centered action as the primary cause of favorable outcomes is thus the second base assumption. Individual choice is the key variable of study. While this is an obvious characteristic of tactics, it is not so clear at the level of strategy where structure and aggregate decision-making have far more impact than individual choices, no matter how timely or profound. For this reason, much of Pure Strategy concerns the necessary discrimination of tactical and strategic decision-making.
Third, and because the overriding intent is to determine the keys to victory, the results of analysis are tainted by pre-establishing good cases (victories) and bad ones (defeats). The first is desirable; the latter is to be avoided. While such a bias appears reasonable, tying the dependent variable a priori to the independent one is theoretically flawed. When posed as a question, the bias becomes clear. We know the United States was victorious in World War II: what decisions and actions by its leadership made it so? Again, a manual of success is sought, a recitation of essential judgments that can be repeated in like situations.
A more neutral approach, one that is too rarely connected to an analysis of decision-making, is to determine the criteria on which the outcome was judged a victory first, and then assess which side prevailed. Chester Wilmot did just this when he argued shortly after the start of the Cold War that it was Stalin who truly won World War II.2 By the Bretton Woods talks in 1943, conducted by the Allies to design post-War international trade, monetary, and banking systems, it was no longer an issue of which side would prevail. After the invasion of mainland Italy later in the year (making an Allied Balkan campaign unlikely) it was not much of a mystery how the war would play out.3 Tactical victory at Stalingrad and the collapse of Paulus’s Sixth Army further meant that the danger of a potentially ruinous peace between Hitler and Stalin had evaporated.4 In retrospect, the signs are plain, but it was Stalin who most clearly grasped the importance of the geopolitical structuring of the coming peace. By the end of 1943, he transformed the focus of his efforts from military victory to continuing political dominance. The 1944 Anglo-American landings in Normandy and southern France merely made obvious the coming military defeat of Germany, which had been envisioned and preliminarily dissected at Casablanca. As the German Ardennes counter-offensive slowed the anticipated American advance, Stalin seized the moment. Recognizing that capturing and holding Berlin was the key to his visions of redrawing the political map of Europe and northern Asia, he pushed to occupy the German capital quickly. In so doing, he ensured that all of the territorial gains realized with the secret pre-War Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact would be legitimized, and more. Eastern Europe came under Soviet sway in a vision unimagined to anyone but Stalin. Without firing a shot, he manipulated the peace negotiations so as to receive Sakhalin Island and effective control of northern China and Korea. At every turn, it seems, Stalin saw past the end of hostilities and looked outward to the post-War settlement. In a recent book by Anthony Beevor, one gets the impression that Stalin had completely mastered the strategic situation.5
It may be centuries before it is truly determined who won World War II. The boundaries of cause and effect on a global scale are lengthy indeed. Nonetheless, at the tactical level the issue of deciding a victor is relatively straightforward. Tangible objectives such as relative casualties, physical control of territory, and public sentiment can be measured, and under these pre-established criteria, a victor assigned. At the strategic level, one quickly loses faith in such calculations. It is quite possible to win the battle and lose the war. It is moreover possible to win the war and lose the strategic advantage. In an attempt to disentangle these contradictions, the twin notions of victory and defeat are critically assessed, and the case is made that planning based on achieving one and avoiding the other is detrimental to clear strategic thinking.
Fourth, there is a widely recognized assumption that although wars and battles can never be repeated—at a minimum the details of any given battle or conflict will never be precisely matched—an examination of roughly similar events is expected to yield the essential elements of future action. This is a more than reasonable approach, and has proved valuable for the customary activities of managing war. It is the essence of training and preparation, for example, the foundation of doctrine and war planning. Yet at the strategic level, this assumption, too, will ultimately be rejected. Whereas standard operating procedures and doctrine are efficiency maximizers for tactical decision makers and operational planners, there is no comparable utility in such handbooks for strategists. There are only principles and norms, analytic techniques, analogies and metaphors, personal experience to include the advice of mentors, and innate judgment for the strategist to draw on. These are tapped for insight, not for answers.
And so here is found the crucial difference between strategists and tacticians. The tactical thinker seeks an answer. And while coming to a conclusion can be the beginning of action, it is too often the end of critical thinking. The strategist will instead search for the right questions; those to which the panorama of possible answers provides insight and spurs ever more questions. No solutions are possible in this construct, only working hypotheses that the strategist knows will one day be proven false or tossed aside. Strategy is thus an unending process that can never lead to conclusion. And this is the way it should be: continuation is the goal of strategy—not culmination. Actions taken and actions to be taken are weighty factors in the strategist’s thinking, of course, but they are elements to be shaped and manipulated, not strict lessons leading to instructions that must be followed. This perhaps counterintuitive assessment animates several discussions on the value of history and social sciences for studying war and strategy, the relationship between decision maker and strategist, and the many differences between the tactical and operational levels of war vice the truly strategic one.
Those who are looking for a manual of strategy will be disappointed. My assessments of strategy are meant to be heuristic rather than definitive. Still, this is as much a work for the practicing strategist as it is for the student of strategy, for while I endeavor to show that the principles of strategy and war are remarkably robust in the coming ages of space and information power, there are fresh adaptations of them that must be taken into account. The new sciences of chaos and complexity are relied upon to drive home the notion that strategy is about change and adaptation. The strategist must concentrate less on determining specific actions to be taken and far more on manipulating the structure within which all actions are determined.

2

THE END OF VICTORY
The first notion the military strategist must discard is victory, for strategy is not about winning. The pure strategist understands that war is but one aspect of social and political competition, an ongoing interaction that has no finality. This is not to say that victory has no place in strategy. The outcomes of battles and campaigns are critical variables within the strategist’s plan, but victory is a concept that has no meaning there; it belongs wholly within the realm of tactics. To the tactical and operational planner, wars are indeed won and lost, and the difference is clear. Success is measurable; failure is obvious.
The differences between strategy and tactics are many, but the meaningful ones are located in the focus of effort and the relationship of the planner to boundaries. Both strategist and tactician are necessary to the prosecution of war; each conducts one dimension of the military way. Tactical thinking is concerned with individual actions and decisions; strategic thinking with aggregate interactions and conditions. Tactical planning takes into account the numerous boundaries that restrict action; strategic planning attempts to manipulate the boundaries that enable action. From the tactical perspective, war is bound by real and artificial restrictions of time and space. Social, historical, geographical, and technological characteristics further provide the context of conflict, offering a structure for actions taken. To be sure, in any socio-political dispute in which a beginning and an end can be discerned, and a culmination of events is desired, victory and defeat are the standards of success.
The closer one gets to the battlefield, the more meaningful—and obvious—the measure of victory becomes. Accordingly, as the conceptual scope widens from battle to campaign, from campaign to war, and from war to policy, the more troublesome it is even to determine a beginning, much less an end, to events. In the grandest scope of history, the best we can state is that the beginning is still open to debate, and the end has not yet come. For the strategist, to whom the tactical and operational outcomes of battles, campaigns, and wars are but moments in the unfolding landscape of politics and history, the impact of military action extends well beyond (and before) the causes and outcomes of wars. This larger focus is appropriate for the strategist, who seeks instead of culmination a favorable continuation of events. The distinction is vital. Battles and wars may end, but interaction between individuals and states goes on, and ‘one can no more achieve final victory than one can “win” history.’1
In this broadest and most encompassing view, strategy represents the link between policy and military action. It connects the conduct of war with the intent of politics. It is subtler than the tactical and operational arts of directly matching means to ends, however. It shapes and guides military means in anticipation of an array of possible coming events. In the process, strategy changes the context within which those events will happen. Thus strategy, in its simplest form, is a plan for attaining continuing advantage. For the goal of strategy is not to culminate events, to establish finality in the discourse between states, but to influence states’ discourse in such a way that it will go forward on favorable terms. For continue it will.

Victory in perspective

From a strategic viewpoint, it is a simple thing to discredit Douglas MacArthur’s oft-quoted dictum that ‘there is no substitute for victory.’2 All one needs to do is insert the word Pyrrhic before victory.3 To be fair, MacArthur was explaining that a great deal of inefficiency, incompetence, or even insubordination could be forgiven in the wake of tactical success, and to that extent, he is probably right—though with the example just given, such an outlook could be strategically disastrous. According to the old saw, it is easier to beg forgiveness after the fact than to get permission beforehand. It is also possible to see in MacArthur’s quote a justification for the use of any means possible in the achievement of ends, or more malevolently, since the means that were used brought about the desired end, they will be excused. Such a view careens ominously towards corruption.
Either way, the quote reinforces the belief that victory is always desirable and defeat is always to be shunned. In a single instance or case, be it fight, game, or any other kind of competition, the statement rings true. But it is stifling as well. Where the probability that future conflicts will occur is high, victory is just one of several acceptable results. Defeat in this instance, at this time, may even be the optimal outcome. This is a principle known to every game player that ever tried to hustle another by faking incompetence early on. To be sure, stringing together anticipated outcomes is the essence of applied strategy. A strategy that anticipates only victories is unrealistic, however, and will ultimately fail. The outcome of a single engagement is but a piece of the overall campaign. The success of campaigns is measured in war progress and the continuing impact on diplomatic, socio-cultural, economic, and information realms.
Even supposing the goal of strategy could be victory, paradox must inevitably ensue. The purpose of strategy would have to be to bring events to a suitable and desired conclusion—to end or finish things. If victory is the means to that end, then a conundrum ensues. Victory cannot be both means and end in the same context. If, however, the purpose of strategy is to enhance the position of the state, then victory is but one means available to the strategist.
When investigating the primary means of strategy, that is, predominantly tactical outcomes both past and anticipated, within the context of campaigns and wars, we see that they must be limited in practice. The purpose of tactical decision-making is to culminate events, to end them so that the war plan can be updated and modified in support of the political aim. In order even to conceive of culmination, of winning, an end condition or set of criteria must be met. Achievement of those criteria is how we know that a win has occurred. Because there is a tactical end to be achieved, demarcated by measurable criteria, it must be bound first in temporal terms. The end must be achieved within a margin of time in order to have the planned effect, or to properly coalesce with other tactical actions. Since the event is bounded in time, then it is also bounded by technology, forces available, weather, and the like. Moreover, it is conditioned by social and cultural norms and values, and restricted by political dictates (e.g. Geneva Convention requirements). These conditions can be constraining or enabling, but because there are always such limitations on interaction, the tactical contest is defined by its conditions and boundaries. Many of these controls are implicit, but in modern war, especially the American form with its many self-limitatio...

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